Friday, March 21, 2008

My time here @ IIMB has been terrific... I mean, yes - it does have its downs (a lot of them actually at times) but the ups more than compensate for it... So, while I have been cribbing that I do not have the time to write anything, today I just could not resist as I browsed through my blog... I have 3 unwritten blogs - First Week @ IIMB, Summers experience, life in general at IIMB etc... So, finally I decided to put an end to this eternal wait for getting a right moment to write a blog and just started typing (so what if FinDev is staring right at my face)... So, what I am going to write about is this one aspect of IIMB students life - Bidding... We do that for eveyrthing... Bid for hostel rooms, bid for courses, bid for the number of students in the club, bid for money you want for your club - everything... And mind you, every such bid is associated with a lot of tension and hajar emotions... So, last 2 days in a row we were subjected to THE BIDDING process...

Day before yesterday - ACAD Council Opens the Bid At!!!!!What do you do when you want a course very badly and 100 others want too and the professor is ready to only teach 75 students... The only fair way to get those rightful 75 is bidding... So, I was the lucky one with only 2 out of 6 courses to be overbid (overbid - numer of applications exceed the cap placed by the prof)... There were people with 4 courses overbid and some unfortunate ones who did not get their course floated (course is not floated when the number of students applying is les than 20)... Amidst these extremes, here was I who prayed that 2 students somehow drop from the BFMS course which I wanted... The other course prof was nice enough to extend the cap and thus was normally bid...

So, stage one mock bidding - everyone gets an idea of what is the general preference of the batch (in terms of which courses they want and which they dont)... Stage 2 - actual bidding - same results... Stage 3 - voluntary swapping for students who change their mind and go for underbid courses (this is where I was waiting for 2 students to opt out)... Stage 4 - After stage 3, we still had 4 courses overbid so bidding process where you allocate 1000 points you have on the subject you desire the most... Its like auctioning - highest bidder wins... So, if you have more than one subject overbid - your points split amongst those subjects and you stand to lose... Stage 5 - tie between people who have same number of points bid... the subject still overbid... So, random allocation... Thanks to excel for the RAND() function which came to the rescue... Finally, Stage 6 - here the top 70/75 (depending on cap) are taken and granted the course... The misfortunate ones go to Stage 1 for a new course...

Agreed finally it did come to luck but there is no other fair way to give courses to students... You could do something like US Univs have - first come first serve or prof selects the students etc... But they are very subjective and do not give every student the same chance as this method (however cumbersome) gives.Yesterday - Hostel Room Going, Going and Gone!!!This is where we first year students select the rooms where we want to live in our second year after we come back from summers... Like in most issues, here too there is a demand supply mismatch... I owuld not even venture into guys hostel allocation which is nothing but huge... So, sticking to that fraction which is one fifth the total population - 51 girls in 51 rooms... Now, the process goes as 8 girls ka groups get allocated first, then 4 girls and then those hapless souls who are with no group... So, initally we were a group of 4 girls frantically trying to get the number to 7,8 or 9... MBA really spoils you because for something as simple as getting a room, you start applying probability theory, game theory etc... So, using one such theories 2 groups of 4 combined (Neha, Reema, Kinjal and Sharmili with Ritu, Aastha,Smriti, NikkySoo) to get the highly coveted K block... First there was a system which said - you give your first preference and if no one bids for it, you get it... The theories were at its best in this phase but to no avail... We still ended bidding for a block which was contested by anohter group... Then some sense prevailed and the bidding for hostel rooms came down to lottery system... Each group nominates one person to go and pick the chit... Who goes from our group now? People asked me to go but just picture this - 7 girls are looking upto you to pick one of the first 3 ranks in group of 8 and you end up picking rank 8... Would you live in peace the rest of your life??? Knowing this fully well, that I cannot do it - considering my luck (there was high probability (here I go MBA again) that I pick up 7 or 8).. So, we had the Jhansi ki Rani of our group Ritu Mittal daring to get us those coveted K blocks... And man she was lucky... We got rank 2 and hence K first which was NICE!!! The group who picked rank 1 could not stop cheering for their group leader... And so couldn't we... Then the hostel secretary wrote - Ritu and Group againt K first and we were so happy to see that one cannot imagine... Of course, there were downsides were groups 7 and 8 got wht they did not prefer, some spilt... Hue and Cry about how our hostel secy sucks (which always happens.. We Indians very easily blame the system and people in it when we dont get what we want), how the process is not fair etc. After the girls rooms were sorted out, guys started which was even more messier...But at the end of the day - I had the block I wanted, with the girls I wanted the block with and with the guys of our group just a floor below...Alls well that ends well people say... So, atleast for me these 2 days ended on a high note... And with this content feeling I came to check my mail which had our QAG (a sort of monitor but for a partiuclar subject) mail saying our FinDev marks are out... Now, you know that every crest is followed by a trough... Without even looking at my score I am certain its a trough that I have to face :(So, thats all for now...FinDev awaits and guilt feeling is already cropping up for wasting so much time instead of reading FinDev...